20 Best Use Of Protean Traps (2023 Updated)

We have a problem with no-see-um gnats that bite ! They are in our screen porch and we cannot keep them out since they are small enough to enter thru the screen. It is a maddening situation as the bites are worse from this gnat than a mosquito ! We bought this device and so far catching some in the glue trap at the bottom of the unit.

We keep this machine going throughout the day, although the blue light is fairly subdued so not many gnats are caught until it gets darker. On some nights we use this in our bedroom to catch any stray gnats or mosquitoes that have gotten into the house.

I was worried about the noise from this product but it is actually very quiet, especially on the lower setting. We also found that it works better when placed near a night light as it attracts the bugs even more.

It is a tough call in keeping the trap running over night in the porch as it may attract more gnats inside the screen who are drawn to the light but we will keep experimenting. So far at least we are finding a dozen or more gnats each day in the glue.

Price for this product seems fair given the success so far.

I bought this for my office after a recent outbreak of fruit flies. I was beyond exasperated with the endeavors of the operation team to treat the problem, so I purchased this on my own in an effort to try something to control the issue.

I ran this on silent mode overnight and returned to find a dozen fruit flies trapped on the sticky pad – definitely already making more progress than the professional bug service or the small cups of apple vinegar placed in various places throughout the office.

This purchase is worth every penny already, and I’ve had it for less than a day. I will say – the instructions say nothing about the 2 white sticky pads included with the machine. Simply remove the adhesive, and place the pad sticky side up in the bottom of the machine – as the flies fall through the machine, they will stick to this adhesive pad.

You can then discard the adhesive pad at anytime and replace it with a fresh one. I will need to research to see if you can buy replacement adhesive pads.

We are plagued with mosquitoes (thanks to neighbors with funky pools – ugh). We don’t like spraying chemicals in the house so I tried this product as a last resort. Oh my gosh, we would not have suffered so many bites had I bought this sooner! The first day – first day! – I counted 10 mosquitoes on the sticky board inside the device.

10! yea! We leave it running when we are out of the house and frequently come back to little presents of dead mosquitoes. We even leave it running near us when we are watching TV. Occasionally a mosquito will venture away from us and get caught in the fan.

The fan has 2 speeds – standard and quiet. The fan does rattle a bit occasionally on either setting but it’s not an annoying noise. It more of a white noise that you know is there but is not a bother.

The glue boards are super simple to pop in and out of the bottom of the trap. And the trap itself (we have the black one) is not obtrusive at all. I highly recommend this item. We are so happy with it we even named it Audrey.

She will forever have a home in our house and our travel trailer. Oh, and the seller has been a true delight. We have been corresponding about the product and I have received prompt and detailed answers to my questions.

I like how easy it was to set up and install out on my back porch. I find a lot of paper wasps trapped in between my screen door and patio door searching for a place to make a nest. I live in southern Colorado and it might be too cold still as I haven’t yet been able to catch any wasps.

However this device included very simple and straightforward instructions and I like that because sometimes I can over think things and the instructions made it fool proof. The plastic cap was easy to screw on and off, which is nice because I think it will benefit an older population if they don’t have a lot of hand strength.

The plastic used to make this device appears durable, which makes sense because it’s a reusable device. I used scissors to open the pouch to the attractant and again, it was pretty easy to set up and place in my backyard.

The directions state to hang in an area where there is a nest, but as I mentioned before, it may still be too cold for wasp activity, but I’ll be ready for them when they arrive.

Living in central Texas, we have a lot of insects in the backyard. It’s difficult to tell the difference between stinging insects and Rescue makes it easy to identify yellowjackets vs paper wasps. It picked this up in case we had any stray yellowjackets living around the yard.

The reusable trap comes with a packet of attractant that you’re supposed to pour onto a cotton ball. I tried this method first and found it such a mess and a hassle. I got attractant everywhere and had to carefully clean it up so as to not attract any yellowjackets into the house.

So I scrapped that option and opted for the 10-week attractant cartridge instead. I wish I had used the 10-week cartridge in the first place because it was so much easier to install and there was no mess at all.

I am preparing my yard for warmer weather and yellow jacket season, so this yellow jacket trap is a necessity. Last year we had one group of yellow jackets build a nest in the stucco siding of our house and another group built one under some garden beds in our yard.

It is such a pain to have an exterminator come out and take care of the problem. Well, not this year. We are ready for them with our reusable trap. It includes attractant that lures them in and they become trapped after flying inside.

The carcasses really start to pile up, too! I like that it’s reusable for many seasons, and it is durable as well. Overall, I’m happy with this trap for keeping the swarms away this summer.

I was excited to get my Rescue Fruit Fly Trap because it’s summer and that means that the fruit flies are all over the place. I love that this trap because it’s made in the USA and it’s reusable. The trap comes with two packets of natural food-based liquid that is used to attract the fruit flies into the trap.

The trap is spill resistant and Rescue claims that the liquid will work for two weeks, however it does last longer than the two weeks. Once the trap is assembled, it’s ready to attract fruit flies and they will go to the liquid and get trapped in the funnel shaped trap without any weird stickie traps, or electric devices that are annoying to place around the house.

In the summer, it’s inevitable to get some fruit flies in the house, especially if you like to keep fresh fruit around, so this trap is a necessity. I don’t notice the trap at all once it’s set up and don’t worry about it until I notice that the bait needs to be changed.

I would strongly recommend the Rescue Reusable Fruit Fly Trap to anyone that doesn’t like fruit flies in their home! I don’t have any issues with annoying fruit flies now that I have this trap in my home.

Does’t work as much as apple cider vinegar or just a simple pan filled up with dish soap and water. I wanted to try because I use apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap in it but the fruit flies problem was getting worst although it was catching a lot of it.

I put side by side to see who was caching more and this is the results: the first pic is the vinegar method, clearly caught a lot I did even bother to count them. The 2nd pic is the one I bought from Walmart caught 13 fruit flies.

Hand down the best is the old method but that night I left in the sink a little pot soaked with water and soap and the same night I had the winner, 3rd pic. Who knew that a simple container filled up with bubble water could catch so many fruit flies.

Don’t waist you money.

I got this because a couple times every summer I end up with fruit flies in the house so figured I’d keep it on hand. Well the time came to try it out. It’s small and looks pleasant enough. Much nicer to look at than the contraption I built with the top of the 20oz bottle cut off and inverted inside the bottom with red wine vinegar poured in it.

Although this contraption I built worked great, it wasn’t really great to look at on the counter for a couple of days while it worked its magic. This little contraption works in a very similar way, basically giving them space to be lured in by the scent of the liquid but making the escape routes very narrow so they can’t find their way out.

The device came with 2 packets of liquid mix. You use them 1 at a time. They smell strongly of red wine vinegar so I imagine after using both of the packets it comes with, you could substitute rwv and keep using the device.

I set up the device and left it on the counter for about 2 days. I didn’t have any more fruit flies! Basically they go down in the trap and drown, so all you have to do is take the lid off and dump it down the sink.

Clean and easy way to get rid of those pesky fruit flies!.

One of the best insect traps that was invented. I remember using these as far back as the 1980’s. I don’t understand why you can’t buy these in the stores anymore. As effective as these traps are, you’d think they would be flying off the shelves!! They really do the trick.

I like the simple concept that insects enter, get stuck in the glue and that’s that. No fogging, no fumes, no dangerous insecticides, no mess. I’m glad these traps are still available because there’s absolutely no downside to using these traps to getting the job done every time you need and use them.

I bought this because it said power kill and I wanted to use something that was quick. I had reservations when I realized how sensitive this trap is. You only need to barely touch the mechanism to set it off.

SADLY this trap did not kill the mouse but wounded it instead. I had to then put it out of its misery. The trigger need to be smaller so it does not go off until the mouse is actually under the bar.

I just want to stock up on a great product for future years. Easy set-easy to bait with a toothpick & peanut butter AND easy to release dead mouse into garbage bag. I use a piece of plastic wrap to release the dead mouse than reset the trap & it’s good to go.

I highly recommend this product!!!.

Just bought these 2 nights ago and they worked right away- first night, put peanut butter in the center (Crunchy type), and also took a small piece of a peanut and wedged it in there so the mice would have to work to get it out.

Dabbed a bit more around the outside of the food opening as well to lure them in. I also bought two of the classic wooden traps, and placed a wooden trap next to a power kill trap in 2 separate locations.

The wooden traps had peanut butter all over the spring trigger. I placed them as recommended, up against the wall in a perpendicular fashion, with the bait side facing the wall. I set the traps at night and the next morning I found 2 mice, one in each power kill trap! It looked like the mice also ate some of the peanut butter off the wooden traps, so I guess they were too light to trigger them.

The food in both power kill traps was left untouched. Went to work that day and found one more in the power kill trap when I got home! This morning I found nothing, so I’m hoping I got the whole family.

In any case, I had been setting wooden traps and struggling with them for weeks, but these traps worked right away for me- a clean, quick kill and easy cleanup. Best 8 bucks I’ve spent in awhile.

Some native cotton mice had gotten into my home, and I didn’t want to kill them because they aren’t usually household pests. When I realized there was a female mouse with young present, I got this from my local Ace, hoping I could catch the whole family and release them together rather than orphan the young.

Caught three young mice in this trap in one night-hopefully the whole litter-and an adult, presumably a parent, in a nearby Hav-a-Hart trap (also purchased at Ace). The Tin Cat was so much easier to set up and to clean afterward than other live traps, and it really works.

I only wish I’d been able to get the version with the see-through top.

It a very nice concept except the mice are able to come out by pushing down the palette. The food was gone so I checked myself and I found out that I was able push down the palette a little bit with minimum effort.

A field mouse just need 1/4 of an inch to go through a crack. I’m sure those mice had a good laugh at me after they escape. The worst thing is I tried a second time with no success. I’m so ashamed.

It has now been a couple months without a feline in our home, and the mice certainly have noticed. We got this trap because it seemed less finicky, was cheaper than other traps, and can hold multiple mice.

Using peanut butter as bait works great, place it right in the center, not near an edge, so the mouse has to enter fully. The first night we caught one adult mouse. You could hear it once caught. It really tried to escape, trying to chew bars, and get back out the way it came in, but the trap mechanism did not fail! I released her into the local cemetery the next morning.

The next day I put it back in the same dark location (a closet), and the next day there were THREE small, not full-grown mice. I couldn’t believe it! Cool, got the whole family! Another trip to the cemetery.

After a couple days, we moved it to another location where a mouse had been seen. The next night, we caught one more adult mouse! So in just over 10 days, we’ve caught 5 mice. The Tin Cat is in the basement now, and if there are any mice down there, I imagine it will catch them in short order.

More effective than I was expecting! Definitely recommended!.

I had this terminator mole that could not not be caught with using someone else’s 3 gopherhawk’s after a week. He needed them back so I bought 5 gopherhawk’s with a probe, the mole bent one trap straps, I think I didn’t have it exactly in the center of the hole.

The mole kept making new holes every day and I would change out all the gopherhawk’s after a day of use. It took 2 weeks but I finally got the little guy. Some people say the gopherhawk’s don’t work, but you have to keep trying.

Don’t give up, you will get those rodents! The one trap that had bent straps was easily replaceable with the replacement straps they sell on gopherhawk’s website for a very affordable price and free shipping! I couldn’t be more happier with gopherhawk genius product!.

Started renovating a new place & noticed we had some other “guests” with us. Not sure if it’s the previous owner or neighbors causing the problem but had pest control spray and still noticed some activity, albeit not as bad as it was initially.

Decided to purchase Roach Motel from Walmart and within 12 hours it was starting to work! They are attracted to the smell, get stuck and die. It’s easy, cost-effective, and works great if you have a minor pest problem.

If you have a major pest infestation your best bet is calling pest control to routinely spray the house (every few months or so) and laying gel baits. You can still use Roach Motel but it won’t eliminate them entirely.

Overall, very impressed with this product. 15/10 stars!.

I love this brand of bug killer; however, I really wanted the small flat black traps that are easy to hide behind appliances. I will use these behind large appliances in the kitchen because I know they will work well, but I really prefer the smaller ones.

May God Bless.

These little pots are wonders if you have fruit flies. We keep a compost bucket in our kitchen, and have been overrun by the little buggers for months now. I have been creating my own catchers with wine glasses, plastic sandwich bags and rubber bands, and they were ugly, and I risked breaking the catchers.

These, on the other hand, are unobtrusive, sit firmly on the shelf, hide the caught bugs, and seem to attract them better than my hack. If you have fruit flies, buy a couple. You won’t regret it.

To use you put apple cider vinegar and a drop of dish soap. I often use this mixture in a little bowl by my sink in the summer. We always get little fruit flies but don’t really have any now. This little container looks much nicer and can’t be knocked over as easily as the bowl.

Within 24 hours of placing this trap on the kitchen counter with the apple cider vinegar and a drop of liquid detergent, there were over 40 fruit flies inside. I had tried a regular dish with saran wrap over it with holes punched in it and got 3-4 in 2 days.

Forget the plastic fancy ones they are harder to trip. Forget the no touch ones and gimmick ones as they do the same thing but not as good and for a higher price. I’ve tried them all and still try any new traps that come out but these are 100% the most reliable with just a dap of peanut butter inside the curled copper trigger.

If mice get too smart a bit or unflavoured dental floss tied around the trigger and cut to 1/4 inch long ends with peanut butter still in the curled part and on floss gets 100% of the sneaky smart ones! I have caught hundreds of mice around my garage with these! PLUS The no poison option also lets me safely leave them out to feed the remains to my little fox friend that visits.

Laid out 4 traps, caught my first mouse 3 weeks later. Probably by chance, because I didn’t use good bait, just left over fruit and kale smoothie smeared onto the trigger. Kind of old school Tom & Jerry mousetrap, but it works.

No fuss, no muss. You know where to look for the dead mouse, and easy to toss out, trap and all. Laid out 4 more traps.

They’ve Victor branded so you know they’re going to work well. Definitely for smaller rodents though. Can’t see these catching/killing anything bigger than a small mouse running around the house. Been a while since I’ve bought these so I’m not sure when they made the switch from steel to copper construction.

Doesn’t seem to affect the quality of the trap though.

I have @50 head of horses at my stable. The fly control includes predators, feed through fly pellets, fly bait and fly traps. Of the ‘stinky’ traps the Terminator pro is by far the best on the market.

This trap can fill in days with enormous numbers of flies. Re-bating it with the bait bags refills makes it work even better. When the flies are so hard to control with extra warm late fall weather, these traps drop the fly levels fast.

These traps will also lure the flies away from the horses and people areas if they are placed correctly.

We fly spray and pick up manure but still have lots of flies. I bought two of these and attracted so many flies right away I bought four more. Seem to work best about 3 to 4 feet off the ground so I hang them under trees in the shade as recommended for the Summer months.

Don’t hang them where the horse will play with them or indoors where it’s too dark. I keep the water about half way up the bottle. Really has helped reduce the flys.

I would have given 5 stars as one of the 3 i bought worked amazingly well. Another caught a lot of flies but not as much as the other and the 3rd one didn’t seem to work. Maybe the attractant was old? I have had similar experience with the bag fly traps as well — out of 10 bags on the property, inevitably, 3 or 4 are duds and don’t work at all.

All I can say is wow!!! This product is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!!! This product out does TomCat! I called them and complained and left a review saying we had already caught 7 mice with another product (your product) and absolutely nothing with theirs! I’ve already bought 10 and I’m actually going to be purchasing more in just a few minutes! I love that it’s a humane trap too!.

Works well, repeatedly catching mice in our basement and kitchen. The clear plastic lets you see at a glance whether you have caught a mouse or not. The springs wore out after a couple years but, since we found this trap more effective than two others we’d tried, we decided to buy this same model again.

I bought this mousetrap because a bigger one I previously bought failed to catch a mouse in my Parents’ house. Upon receiving this, I inspected it. The first thing I noticed was that there was hardly any ventilation.

That scared me because I wanted to catch the mouse and keep him alive so I can set it free elsewhere. I read other reviews on this mousetrap claiming that their mouse had suffocated to death inside. I can see why.

To solve the problem, I used a thin drillbit to drill a bunch of small holes in the top of the trap to create more ventilation. I then baited it with peanut butter and put it in the space the mouse moved through each night.

Low and behold within an hour, I heard the “snap” and checked the mousetrap to find the little critter inside. I took him a distance from my house and set him free. Mission accomplished.

The best for killing mass quantities of flies. We?ve tried innumerable contraptions etc over the years that didn?t work. It?s the bait, the flies think it?s great. I love seeing bags full of dead flies.

They even improved the top for easy hanging. I hang them some distance away from my stock but still near manure piles as the attractant will lure the flies away from where you and you animals are. I also leave bags full of dead flies hanging, only throwing them away when the season is over as they add that much more attractant for luring more flies.

Enjoy:))).

Works well at attracting flies, but has design flaw. The cap should be larger to help keep rain from getting in. Bag fills with water and makes it almost impossible to get cap pushed down, without it leaking all over the place.

Put the bag inside of a zip lock bag and two plastic bags. Somehow it still leaked and stunk up the whole area. The smell makes you nauseous. We decided to not use this product anymore. If it had a bigger cap that could act as a rain stopper, it might get a better review.

We had one bag where it worked like it should, all the others filled up from the rain making it so you can’t close the cap. I will say a skunk smells better than what we smelled when it leaked out.

I bought these to go in my son’s pig stall. Everyone else at the barn bought the dome fly traps. Seems like I’m the only one catching flies. The small bag only lasted 2 days in the stall before it was filled with dead flies and completely crawling with maggots.

I just bought 2 big ones and hung in the stall. Just beware, the smell is absolutely horrifying it is death warmed over. I have a stomach of steel but this bag definitely made me gag.

I tried 4 different kinds of traps. This is the only one that is easy to use, good quality and very effective. The tubular design is unique and that’s what makes this one best for me. We have very crumbly dry dirt in the summer and this one keeps the dirt from collapsing from the top or covering the bait from below.

Once a gopher enters this trap he is dead.

I suspected this wouldn’t work. The trip wire was in the wrong place and wasn’t sensitive enough to activate. Not only that. I noticed that the moles had actually tunneled around it as if they it was just a nuisance.

Perhaps my moles have an IQ of over 160. So back to the drawing board on assault on the mole kingdom. Now I have to fill in the hole that I dug to load this trap in the first place.

I have dogs, so poison is not an option. These are great because no poison is involved. Just bury the can partially so the only light the gopher sees is from the other end of the can. As he pushes dirt to plug the light.

bam he is trapped! So simple, so effective. My dogs get a free snack.

I had been using the Starbar Captivator fly trap and it was working well. When it was finished I would push the top back down and tape over it with duct tape to seal it up and put it in a trash bag by itself to seal up the smell of death.

I thought I’d give this Rescue brand a try since it was a bit cheaper and it also had great reviews. I hang them from a fence, about 3 feet from the ground (wire hook through the hole in the plastic top).

It captured lots of flies just like the Starbar, but not any more than, and not any quicker. The Rescue has a stronger smell that was way more annoying than the Starbar. Then when I went to remove it and tape over the top with tape, I noticed one of the plastic seams at the top pleat was open! I carefully tried to tape over it to seal that spot up.

Then I noticed it was leaking from the bottom as well. The seam at the bottom was opening up! Before I knew it I had a total mess dripping out on the ground. I covered it with dirt to keep the smell down.

It’s like the plastic bag was just falling apart from a little handling. Maybe it can’t handle the Texas heat and sun. I’ve got two more of these Rescue traps, but I’m not taking the risk of it opening up on me again.

I handle these things very gently because I don’t want any liquid sloshing out. I’ll stick with the Captivator since it is a rigid plastic pail with no seams to come apart.

These things work like a charm. We hang ours on a twig of our ficus tree in the middle of the heat of the Arizona summer. We have a problem with flies near our garbage cans and then they come inside the garage and eventually into our home.

Within 2 days of hanging a new bag there can be up to 40 live flies trapped inside. These little bags have been a game changer. Instead of getting 20 flies a day in the kitchen, we get 2. I spray the house flies with Zevo, (which I also buy/order from Walmart.

) Zevo is another complete and total game changer. I do not care for the smell of Zevo but it is not offensive to everyone in our family, only me, so I use spray Microban (which I also order/buy from Walmart) to wipe up the Zevo oily residue and dead fly.

Problems solved. You will be writing a positive review soon, too.

Of the multiple interceptors I’ve tried and seen, these are the best. I can’t say that it absolutely traps 100% of the bed bugs that fall into it, but of all the times I’ve seen live bugs in it, I have only noticed one ever crawling out with hundreds staying trapped.

I appreciate the manufacturer making sure this is an effective interceptor. I have seen these catch bed bugs at night while you sleep. Just keep periodically wiping the interceptors with a clean cloth and eventually, provided your bed stays clear of bed bugs, there are less and less of them in the interceptor between cleanouts–just like is should be.

It takes time, but it may save you a lot of money.

Been using sticky adhesive papers under each bed post. They work but crumple up under the weight of bed and are pretty messy removing. These new bug trap interceptor work pretty good and hold up under the weight.

They have been on about 3 wks now and I check them everyday. Found a bug(not sure) in the outer ring of one of them this morning. They work. Still keep all bedding off of floor and nothing touching the walls as indicated in instructions.

This monitors the bed bug activity towards your bed or furniture. I still treated room with local bed bug diatomaceous killer. Bed frame cleaned with isopropyl acohol. First thing to do ( I did) inspect mattress and box spring for bed bugs and signs of bed bugs.

Wash all bedding in hot water and dry extra long. Put a bed bug mattress cover(zip up) on box and mattress. Clean bed frame all cracks and crevices spray with alcohol, kills on contact. Room should be cleared, vaccumed and treated with bed bug killer of your choice around all base boards, receptacles,etc.

When making bed, be sure to NOT have any bedding or anything touching the floor or walls and any contact. Bed bugs cannot fly or jump so their only way to get to your bed(you) is by a direct route if something is touching the bed.

These interceptors basically monitor bed bug activity. IF you have one or more in the outer ring, this indicates it came from the floor. IF there is one in the inner ring, it indicates it came from the bed/frame.

They are worth a shot and some peace of mind. Warren.

The product arrived promptly, in good condition. The instructions were clear and understandable. Warning: do not touch the powder on the surface of the item when removing from box. It needs to be there as part of the product functionality.

I learned the hard way. FYI: Your bed has to have legs to fit in the interceptors. If not, you can use the dry ice method. I don’t know how the bed bugs got in my house. But I was getting bit every night for about 2 weeks.

By using the interceptors and turning my bed into an island, I have not had a bite since the first night. Here is how I did it: The directions give a few options on how to use the interceptors. I chose the island method.

Put the legs of the bed on the interceptors. Move the bed away from the wall. Move every thing away from the bed, like night stands. don’t let the blankets touch the floor, or the pillows touch the walls.

Move anything out from under the bed, that is touching the underside of the bed. Move all electrical cords away from the legs, interceptors, or any part of the bed.

THis used to be the best product on the market–I ordered a batch of them year after year. Last August, I even ordered a second batch, but to my dismay the traps had NO effect. Moths continued to flutter about, ignoring the traps.

I chalked it up to being a ‘late in the season’ order, supposing that the pheromones might be weakened by this point, and was unconcerned–until my new batch arrived. Not even adding two of the pheromone patches to one sticky surface attracted a single moth.

Whether Garden’s Alive is cutting corners, or their manufacturing source has changed is not my concern. The product is no longer effective, so look elsewhere.

Each time I set up a trap it would attract a few moths in a couple of hours and fill up in 30 days. So I set traps every month for the entire summer. Really cut down of infestation which stopped last winter and restarted in the Spring.

Maybe I’ll update this post next Spring. My moths originally came in a bag of chocolate bars – very well know manufacturer. They also seem to like other foods. Deduct one star for the shipping costs.

These traps are light as a feather but shipping is based same as heavier gardening items.

Love this product. Keep backups. My traps really do look like the picture. Keep new scent pads to add to traps not yet full. Can I add another star??? I squish the ones just hanging around but not stuck.

They came a day early! Got the traps on Monday evening, its now Thursday morning (three days) and I have already caught three (ALMOST four!) squirrels, and three rats! I just used a piece of coconut husk (about an inch wide and two or three inches long) and jammed it up onto the trigger, and smeared peanut butter on it.

This trap works very well. Its specialty is squirrels, but it also catches rats. I would use a rat trap for rats, but it does indeed catch rats. Below is a young rat with his friend, the squirrel, along with my setup, and how it catches them.